This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Saturday:
Don’t forget to “fall back” tonight. Before you fall back on to your bed, set
your clock back one hour to the real time. Daylight savings ends early Sunday
morning at 2 a.m. This means one more hour of sky watching at night because the
Sun will set one hour earlier. Ben Franklin proposed the idea of “saving
daylight” by adjusting our clocks way back in 1784. Daylight savings time was
first utilized during World War I as a way to save electricity. After the war,
it was abandoned. It was reintroduced during World War II on a year-round
basis. From 1945 to 1966, some areas implemented daylight savings and some did
not. But, it was not implemented with any uniformity as to when it should start
and stop. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 codified the daylight savings rules.

Sunday: Happy
Celtic New Year! Many historians think that November 1, known for the festival
of Samhain, was the ancient Celtic New Year’s Day. Samhain, Old Irish for
“summer’s end”, was a harvest festival that may have contributed to some of the
customs of our current “holiday” of Halloween.

Monday:
Lacerta, the faint lizard constellation, is straight overhead at 7 p.m. It was
named by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687 to fill the space
between the much brighter and well-defined constellations Pegasus, Andromeda,
Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Cygnus going clockwise from the constellation just
south of Lacerta. Chinese know this group of stars as a flying serpent or
dragon.

Tuesday: Did
you look up Maria Mitchell and Johannes Fabricius based on last week’s
Halloween costume suggestion? Maria Mitchell lived in the 1800s and was the
first American woman known to work as an astronomer. She used a telescope to
discover a comet too dim to be seen with the naked eye, earning a gold medal
prize from Danish King Frederick VI. Johannes Fabricius was one of the first
astronomers to discover sunspots. He wrote the first publication about sunspots
at the young age of 24. Unfortunately, he died five years later.

Wednesday:
Mars is one fist above the southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

Thursday: Tonight’s
full moon is in the constellation Pisces the fish. Tonight’s other Moon is….
Wait a minute. The Earth has only one Moon. True. And it has always had only
one Moon. Not necessarily true. According to the best existing model, about
four billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the young Earth. The
resulting debris coalesced to form the Moon. However, this model left a
mystery: why is the Moon so asymmetric? Hardened-lava lowlands dominate the
near side while the far side is dominated by mountainous highlands. According
to a recent revision of the prevailing model, the early collision formed a
large Moon and a small Moon. Over the years, the small Moon caught up to and
collided with the large Moon. The highlands are the material from the collided
small Moon. For more information about this theory, go to http://goo.gl/O801zk.

Friday:
Jupiter is a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon at midnight. It will
be high in the southern sky by 6 a.m. But if you are up at 6 a.m., try to spot
the elusive Mercury. It is a half a fist above the east-southeast horizon, just
ahead of the rising Sun.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Saturday:
Dead October flowers lead to November meteor showers. While the Leonid meteor
shower is the big name event, the few bright and surprisingly colorful
fireballs per hour you can see during the typical Southern and Northern Taurids
meteor showers may make it worth your while to stay up late for a while. These
two showers overlap from about October 19 to November 19. Meteor showers are
named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These
meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is about
four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 11
p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night, as it will remain one fist
to the right of the V-shaped Hyades Cluster with its bright star Aldebaran
(pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran). Meteors are tiny rocks that burn up in the
atmosphere when the Earth runs into them. These rocks are broken off parts of
Comet 2P/Encke.

Sunday:
What do Justin Bieber and Betelgeuse have in common? Both are superstars. One
will shine brightly for about a few hundred thousand more years. The other will
only seem to be around for that long. Baby, baby, baby, ohh, you need to learn
more about Betelgeuse, the real super giant star that is big enough to hold
about one million Suns. For more information about Betelgeuse, go to http://goo.gl/0MyfHT.
You’ll find it one fist above due east at 11 p.m.

Monday:
The Stargate movies and TV shows have access to a portal to other planets.
Harry Potter has access to a portal to the Chamber of Secrets. You have access
to a Portal to the Universe. This portal is not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom
but on the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/. It is a
repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts. A recent story
highlights the discovery of a 12 billion year old galaxy surrounded by a ring
where new stars are forming. Astronomers want to study this galaxy because of
the vast difference in age of stars in the center and those in the ring. You’ll
want to study this galaxy because it looks like the Chakram weapon used by
Xena, Warrior Princess. Read more about the discovery at http://goo.gl/Av9ZDN.

Tuesday: Deneb,
one of the three bright stars in the Summer Triangle, is nearly straight
overhead at 7 p.m.

Wednesday:
Jupiter rises in the east-northeast sky at about 1 a.m. By 7 a.m., it is four
fists above the southeast horizon.

Thursday: Late
October to-do list. Buy costume. Check. Watch Orion rise in the east-southeast
sky just before midnight. Check. Take kids to Boo Central. Double check. Once
again, CWU clubs and organizations will turn the SURC Ballroom into a
monstrously fun, safe, and educational place to trick or treat. In fact, it
will be “science or treat” for the pre-school through fourth graders who visit
all of the science club booths. Boo Central runs from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the
SURC Ballroom on the CWU campus tomorrow night. Contact Campus Activities at
509-963-1450 for more information.

Friday: Halloween.
The pumpkins. The candy. The children going door-to-door dressed up as their
favorite astronomers Maria Mitchell and Johannes Fabricius. At least they should because Halloween is, in part, an
astronomical holiday. Halloween is a “cross-quarter date”, a day approximately
midway between an equinox and a solstice. Historically, the Celts of the
British Isles used cross-quarter dates as the beginnings of seasons. For the
Celts, winter began with Halloween. So when all those little Mitchells and
Fabricii come to your door tonight night, honor the Celts and give them a
wintry treat. If they ask you for a trick, point out Mars, one and a half fists
above the south-southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Saturday: The
Milky Way makes a faint white trail from due northeast through straight
overhead to due southwest at 9 p.m. Starting in the northeast, the Milky Way
“passes through” the prominent constellations Auriga the charioteer, Cassiopeia
the queen, and Cygnus the swan with its brightest star, Deneb, nearly straight
overhead. After Cygnus, you’ll see Aquila the eagle with its brightest star
Altair about four and a half fists above the southwest horizon.

Sunday:
Halloween is next week so make sure you load up on peanut clusters, almond
clusters, and open star clusters. That last one will be easy (and cheap…
actually free) because two of the most prominent open star clusters in the sky
are easily visible in the autumn sky. The sideways V-shaped Hyades Cluster is
two fists above due east at 10 p.m. Containing over 300 stars; the Hyades
cluster is about 150 light years away and 625 million years old. The Pleiades
Cluster, a little more than three fists above due east, is larger at over 1000
stars and younger. Compared to our 5 billion year old Sun, the 100 million year
age of the Pleiades is infant-like. The moon will help you find these clusters.
This morning at 6:30 a.m., the Pleiades cluster is less than one fist to the
upper right of the moon and the Hyades cluster is about one fist to the upper
left of the moon. Tomorrow morning, the moon sits in the “V” of the Hyades
cluster.

Monday: The
Orionid meteor shower consists of the Earth colliding with pieces of the
remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks for the next three
mornings. This is not a meteor shower that typically results in a meteor storm.
There will be about 15-20 meteors per hour, many more meteors than are visible
on a typical night but not the storm that some showers bring. Luckily, the moon
is new so it won’t be obscuring many meteors. Meteor showers are named after
the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors
appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about six fists
above due south at 5 a.m. this morning. You can follow this point throughout
the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star
Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews) which rises in the east-northeast sky at
about 11 p.m. The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. If you
fall asleep tonight, you can catch the tail end of the shower every night until
early November. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/35wHaN.

Tuesday: At
6:30 p.m., Saturn is a half a fist above the southwest horizon and Mars is one
and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon.

Wednesday:
Jupiter is five fists above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Thursday: “Turn
around, every now and then I think eclipses aren’t real and they’re never
coming around” starts the lesser-known Bonnie Tyler song “Partial Eclipse of
the Sun”. Of course, solar eclipses are real and they come about twice a year.
Fresh off of a late night total lunar eclipse two weeks ago, there will be a
partial solar eclipse visible in the western and central United States and
Canada. In Washington State, the eclipse starts at about 1:30 p.m. The peak
eclipse occurs at 3 p.m. when more than 50% of the Sun is blocked by the moon.
The partial eclipse ends at 4:20 p.m. For more information about the eclipse,
including a simulated picture of what the properly filtered Sun will look like
during the peak eclipse in your city, go to http://goo.gl/19f07P.

Friday:
“It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” Constellations can be considered
neighborhoods in the nighttime sky. But, the stars in those constellations are
not necessarily neighbors in real life. For example, the bright stars in the
constellation Cassiopeia range from 19 to over 10,000 light years away from
Earth. One constellation that consists of real neighbors is Ursa Major. Or,
more specifically, the Big Dipper. Five stars in the Big Dipper are all moving
in the same direction in space, are about the same age and are all about 80
light years from Earth. “Please won’t you be my neighbor?” Skat, the third
brightest star in the constellation Aquarius is a neighbor to these five Big
Dipper stars, all of which are about 30 light years from each other. They are
thought to have originated in the same nebula about 500 million years ago. Just
like human children do, these child stars are slowly moving away from home.
Skat is about three fists above due south at 10 p.m. The much brighter
Fomalhaut is a fist and a half below Skat. And, it’s not fun being below Skat.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Saturday:
Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a dolphin. A dolphin? The
constellation Delphinus the dolphin is nearly six fists held upright and at
arm’s length above due south at 8:30 p.m. The constellation’s two brightest
stars are called Sualocin and Rotanev, which is Nicolaus Venator spelled
backwards. Venator worked at the Palermo Observatory in Italy in the mid
nineteenth century. He slipped these names into Giuseppe Piazzi’s star catalog
without him noticing. The Daily Record (shop Ellensburg) would never let
anything like that get into their newspaper. Their editing (shop Ellensburg)
staff is too good. Nothing (pohs grubsnellE) evades their gaze.

Sunday: The
constellation Vulpecula, the fox, stands high in the south at nightfall. It is
in the middle of the Summer Triangle, which is defined by the stars Vega,
Deneb, and Altair. The fox is so faint that you need dark skies to see it.

Monday: Saturn
is a half a fist above the west-southwest horizon and Mars is one fist above
the south-southwest horizon at 7 p.m. Over the next few weeks, Saturn will move
towards the Sun in the sky while Mars will hold a fairly steady position.

Tuesday:
What time is tea time? Certainly not during an autumn evening. The
constellation Sagittarius the archer, with its signature teapot shape, is
sinking into the south-southwest horizon by 8 p.m. The handle is on top and the
spout is touching the horizon ready to pour that last cup of tea.

Wednesday:
According to the Maasai people in southern Kenya, Olapa, the goddess of the
moon, is married to Ngai, the god of the Sun. The argumentative couple can be
seen 90 degrees apart from each other all morning. Only the left side of
Olapa’s face is illuminated. Hummm. 90 degrees apart in the morning sky. Left
side of the moon illuminated. It must be a third quarter, also called last
quarter, moon.

Thursday: If
the Dawn spacecraft didn’t know any better, it may have played “The Message” by
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: “It’s like a jungle sometimes. It makes
me wonder how I keep from goin’ under”. That’s because most movies show an
asteroid belt as millions of large rocks close together, moving through space
and difficult to navigate. A “jungle” of asteroids. In reality, the objects in
the asteroid belt are far apart from each other and easy for Dawn to move
through without danger. Follow the trail of the dawn spacecraft using images
found at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/live_shots.asp.

Friday: Jupiter
is less than a fist to the left of the moon at 7 a.m., fairly high in the
southeast sky.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Saturday: Since
Halloween is later this month; the stores are filled with bags of candy
clusters. Instead, take time to look at a star cluster. The Hyades cluster is
an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It
is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light
years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of
detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance
to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the
universe. Aldebaran, nearly two fists held upright and at arm’s length above
the east horizon at 11 p.m., is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades
cluster.

Sunday: At
7 p.m., Saturn is one fist above the southwest horizon and Mars is one and a
half fists above the south-southwest horizon.

Monday: Along
with the not-so-subtle drug reference in their name, The Doobie Brothers made
an astronomy reference in their song lyrics: “Old black water, keep on rollin’,
Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shining on me.” Astronomers now think that
some of the water on Earth may be older than the Solar System. The chemical
signature of the water indicates it came from a very cold source, just a few
degrees above absolute zero. The early Solar System was much warmer than this
meaning the water came from a source outside the Solar System. For more
information about the old Earth water, go to http://goo.gl/QsEu5P.

Tuesday: The
Draconid meteor shower peaks for the next three nights. The meteors appear to
come from a point in the head of Draco, the dragon constellation. This point is
about five fists held upright and at arm’s above the northwest horizon at 10
p.m. tonight. This point remains near the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco
throughout the night. Typically, this is a minor shower. However, Draconid
meteors are slow moving which means you will have a easy time differentiating
true Draconid meteors, from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, from stray grains of
dust that happen to enter the Earth’s atmosphere near where we see the
constellation Draco. The moon will be out nearly the entire night so all but
the brightest meteors will be obscured. Luckily, tomorrow night brings its own
show. For everything you need to know about the Draconid meteor shower, go to http://goo.gl/HGkw0w.

Wednesday:
“Red Moon, you saw me sleeping alone. Before the Sun rises up. Before I turn on
my phone.” Early risers and late nighters will see a total lunar eclipse this
morning. During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon enters the earth’s shadow. Total
lunar eclipses are not as obvious as total solar eclipses because light still
reaches the Moon even when it is directly behind the Earth. That is because the
Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens and bends rays of light that would normally
miss the Moon such that they hit the Moon. That doesn’t mean the Moon looks the
same during a total lunar eclipse as it does during a normal full Moon. Sunlight
is white. White light is the sum of all of the colors in the visible spectrum
(red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Our atmosphere scatters
the blue component of the Sun’s white light. That is why our sky is blue. When
the Sun or Moon is near the horizon, the light passes through a lot of the
atmosphere meaning a lot of the blue light is scattered and the Sun or Moon
looks redder than when it is high in the sky. During a total lunar eclipse,
sunlight passes through a large slice of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining
light that reaches the Moon is reddish. Thus, the Moon looks red during a total
lunar eclipse. From our perspective in Washington, the Moon will start to enter
the Earth’s shadow at 2:15 a.m. Totality starts at 3:30 a.m. By 4:25 a.m., the
total eclipse will be over with the partial eclipse ending about an hour later.
For more information about this eclipse, and lunar eclipses in general, go to
the Science@NASA video at http://goo.gl/iCnkAu.

Thursday: Jupiter
is about four and a half fists above the east-southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Friday: While
you are resting after looking for Draconid meteors for two nights, start
thinking about the Orionid meteor shower. This shower, which consists of the
earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail, peaks on
the morning of October 21 but produces meteors from now until early November.
These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is
about three fists above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow
this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent
reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast
- up to 40 miles per second.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.